Have you heard of "sociogenomics," or of "polygenic scores" ?

We hadn't when we tripped over an article in the New York Times titled A new scientific field is recasting who we are and how we got that way by Dalton Conly of Princeton University. It highlights scientific progress in genetics by answering some questions such as: “how do our genes predetermine our health, or our success in life.” The article in questions is an interesting case study in wokeness as well, but we won’t go into that.

In this post, we’ll try (1) to recast the new scientific context, now dubbed sociogenomics, a fusion of behavioural science and genomics, and (2) list a few important results. Here we go:

Throughout human history, genetics (“blood”, or “family line” in ancient parlance), was held to determine the future of our offspring. Ch. Darwin and G. Mendel made important contributions (Darwin, in this blog’s opinion, was the pivotal killer of “faith-based” believe systems (religions)). Then, F. Crick and J. Watson decoded the workings of the DNA—explaining how “sex” works in creating inherited traits, and we got used to the idea that specific traits are connected to specific genes.

 

But then came the discovery that some traits are not linked to one gene, but correlated to a whole profile of genes, which led to the construction of so-called polygenetic indexes. Initially, research focused on the genetic profiles (PGI-scores) of specific diseases--63% of breast cancer incidence can now be linked to polygenetic factors, or 71% of schizophrenia. But then it became clear that all kinds of things human are related to all kinds of polygenetic factors.

Take educational attainment: among adults who score very low on the corresponding PGI, only 7% finish college. Among those whose score is very hight, the number is 71%.  PGI’s have been created for more than 3500 traits, from sleep habits to right- or left-handedness and extroversion.

But that’s not all. PGI’s codetermine social behaviour. Children who have genes that correlate to more success in school evoke more intellectual engagement from their parents than kids in the same family who don’t share these genes. This feedback loop starts at the age of 18 month, long before any assessment of academic ability. In other words, parents don’t just parent their children, children parent their parents, somehow---somewhat mysteriously---guided buy their genes. And it turns out that genetic guidance happens everywhere. People in the US tend to marry people with similar genetic profiles. Very similar, in fact: spouses are on average the genetic equivalents of their first cousins once removed. Even more mysteriously, there’s the effect of lateral gene transfer (something very popular among microbes): your spouse's genes influence your likelihood of depressions almost a third as much as your own genes do. The presence of a few genetically predisposed smokers in high school appears to cause smoking rates to spike for an entire grade---even among those students who didn’t personally know those nicotine-prone classmates---spreading like a genetically sparked wildfire through the social network.   

Polygenetic indexes have spread rapidly and are now arriving in IVF-clinics. In the past, one could already screen embryos for some genetic diseases, but soon you will be able to screen them for happiness and success in life. It’s a brave new world out there. Be prepared.

Our friend Glenn sends this picture from Baltimore and writes...

 

..."Schrödinger's dumpster."

(Got it? Hint: "Schrödinger's cat")

Ugly music -- or: What Looks Like an Avant-garde Work of Art

 

 

We have been at this for a while. 

Here, for example, in a blog post from 2011:

 

"Let me explain."

That was the post, the caption is ours. 

You get it? You feel the bar-stool rocking under you? You're shocked? Like the police commissioner in Casablanca, when he's informed that illegal gambling is going on in Harry's Rick's bar? Or like the average reader of the NYT, when they are informed that Trump is leading in the polls? 

Were we insinuating anything? With our post?

Yes. We did. And we didn't let go. 

Like here, in our third, yet unfinished part of our Green Eyes franchise (see side bar). It has the legendary art critic, Souren Souleikan, appearing on the very first page of said novel (the narrator here is John Lee, the antihero of the franchise). 

Quote:

“Who are you?” I ask.
“I’m Souren Souleikan,” he says, “the art critic.” He allows for a few wordless seconds, then adds, “I’ve come at the right moment, I see. There’s some art that requires my critique. May I come in?”
“I’m busy,” I say, raising my smudge-painted hand, but he’s already stepped into the den where he positions himself in front of my easel.
“You are the artist?” he asks, pointing at the canvas with an abstracted gesture. “Interesting.”
I’m slow-witted under duress but manage to utter, “Don’t you see?”
“Interesting,” he reiterates. “The composition. White dots on a white background, shan’t we say?” He cocks his head and squints his eyes at my thin, hasty brush strokes. “Three dots, is it not…no, two. I count two dots. Why two dots Mister…?”
“John,” I say.
“Mr. John. Why two?”
“It’s contemporary art,” I reply, and then, thinking of Alex—what Alex would say, just for fun, or to play one of his tricks—I add: “About the epistemology of contemporary art.”
“Oouh, oouh,” Souleikan goes. “E-pi-ste…e-pi-ste... Say that again.”
“E-pi-ste-mo-lo-gy,” I enunciate.
“You passed the test, Mr. John. But contemporary art it is not. It’s modern art, at best. Contemporary art is when pissoirs are fixed to museum walls, or sharks swim in formaldehyde, or a surfeit of candies idles in the corner of a fashionable Park Avenue address where the hostess fears nothing more than passing sweet tooth.”  

Unquote.

You get it? You need another hint? here it is:

"Ugly music".

It's a term from an essay of Susan Sontag about her having an affair tea with Thomas Mann.

The "ugly music" is not about visual art but about tonal -- or, more precisely -- atonal music, but you get the message.

And it's not only you...somebody else got the message as well, namely a certain Orlando Whitfield, who's publishing a book about his former boss, Inigo Philbrick. Some years ago, Inigo had been one of London's up-and-coming contemporary art dealers. Quote from a preview of Orlando's  book in the last edition of The Economist:

At stake, beyond the million-dollar deals, are some bigger questions, like why people assign value to objects depending on who created them. [Mr Philbrick was paid to intermediate in the aquisition of an artwork called “Untitled (Welcome)” for an Israeli-Canadian billionaire.] The artwork by Félix González-Torres was a sculpture of sorts, involving door mats. But the art had gone missing when the buyer’s representative came to London, so Mr Philbrick tried to recreate it. He bought 100 plastic mats from a hardware store and laid them on his gallery’s floor. No amount of Diptyque room spray or frantic wafting of auction catalogues would fully banish the smell of the new rubber, Mr Whitfield recalls in his book, but it did not matter. The buyers representative saw what looked like the avant-garde work and bought it.

Unquote. Is this what contemporary art is all about?

You say. (If more than 100 of you promise to buy the third part of my Green Eyes series (tentatively titled "Artful Murder"), I promise I'll finish it. Let the bar-stool rock some more.

The Miracle of Clean Energy -- No Miracle Needed

A Stanford U. research group has calculated how clean, renewable energy could replace dirty energy worldwide (links below). The gist:

- The study covers 145 countries, which emit 99.7% of world's carbon dioxide. 

- Overall upfront cost to replace all dirty energy in the countries considered is about $62 trillion.

- Due to $11 trillion annual energy cost-savings, the scheme pays back for itself in under 6 years.

- the plan may also create 28 million more long-term, full-time jobs. 

Some details: 

- No miracle technologies needed.

- All energy sectors are electrified by means of renewable sources (solar, wind, hydrology) -- creating heat, cold, and hydrogen from such electricity -- storing electricity, heat, cold, and hydrogen -- expanding energy transmission.

- Biggest reason for the cost reduction: clean, renewable energy uses much less energy than combustion-based energy. 

- Worldwide energy usage goes down by 56% with an all-electric system powered by clean, renewable sources (reasons: efficiency of electric vehicles over combustion vehicles -- efficiency of electric heat pumps -- efficiency of electrified industry -- eliminating energy needed to obtain fossil fuels).

Here are the links:

- article published by the study's leader, Prof. Mark Z. Jacobson in The Hill (an influential Washington DC outlet)

- German summary

Art is art is art is art

 

Michael goes crypto...

...well, not quite, but he does what he rarely does, he reproduces an entire piece from the NYT (last time he did that it was with a column from Ross Douthat about Obama's victory in the 2012 elections). Enjoy: 

Going for Broke in Cryptoland -- By David Segal

Some hype coins mint instant millionaires. Others go bust. Why not take a chance?

They have names that make them sound delicious, like Cookie Coin. Or headed for outer space, like Pluto Coin. Or space-bound and delicious, like AstroCake, which was described this way: “Created 5 minutes ago. SAFE.”

Hype coins, as they’re known, sit squarely on the flashy, speculative end of the cryptocurrency business. Every day, dozens of them are created around the world by developers promising fortunes to would-be investors. It usually ends poorly. The vast majority of these tokens are worthless within a couple of weeks. The developers, on the other hand, can make tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes a lot more.

Despite this track record, hype coins have become the investment of choice for millions of people, most of them men in their 30s, or younger, and convinced that the economy writ large is rigged against them. Some are the same traders who have been leaping into stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment. To them, crypto is both a source of hope (in imminent riches) and fellowship (many coins have chats on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, that can sound like faith-based support groups).

It’s hard to think of another financial craze in which so many people poured so much into entities with so little intrinsic value. Few hype coins have any utility as currency. Good luck buying lunch with one. Many are minted in numbers rarely seen outside astronomy books — trillions, quadrillions — which dooms them to vanishingly tiny prices.

From the outside, the hype coin party is a mystery. To understand it, you have to join it.

Which is surprisingly easy. You may have heard that Bitcoin, the granddaddy of crypto, is “mined” by power-gobbling supercomputers, a process that verges on the utterly incomprehensible. Making a hype coin, by contrast, is more like ordering a pizza online. The entire process is automated and speedy. The fixings — in this case, what to call it, how many coins to make and so on — are up to you.

So one day in May, I created my own cryptocurrency. I did it on a Zoom call with an excitable 36-year-old in Taiwan, Dan Arreola, who had posted a tutorial on YouTube about how to make, and promote, a “scam coin.” It has more than 240,000 views.

How Trump could get convicted by the Senate -- By Keith Norton

Donald Trump had a pretty good run in Washington — rampaging through the Republican Party, driving the media to distraction, enraging the Democrats and treating his own co-partisans in the Senate like a bunch of valets. But that’s all about to end. And I predict it will end with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — as the new minority leader — incinerating Trump’s political future for good. McConnell needs just 18 votes to finish off Trump. Conviction on impeachment can bring with it a ban on holding federal office — which includes the presidency. A two-thirds majority or 67 votes is necessary for conviction. For McConnell that means 18 votes if West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin opposes or 17 if Manchin joins in. (Preferably, McConnell would want to get to 68 votes so that no Republican could be accused of being the one vote that convicted Trump).

Why should McConnell and the Republican senators convict?

For Republicans, allowing Trump to continue to be eligible to run for president is a recipe for disaster. Trump simply cannot win in a general election. The combination of events at the Capitol and his ejection from the major social media platforms is fatal.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t get the GOP nomination in 2024.

The way the Republican primary system is structured helps a candidate like Trump who has a dedicated base — even if it is the minority of the party. GOP primaries and caucuses award a disproportionate share of delegates to the top vote-getter and in some states the winner takes all. In 2020, Trump failed to get even one-third of the vote in South Carolina, but that was enough to lead the field and collect all 50 delegates.

In fact, Trump failed to get a majority of the Republican vote in any state primary or caucus until his home state of New York voted in April 19 (Ted Cruz had four majority results). Trump won 10 states with less than 40 percent of the vote and two with less than 35 percent. In total, Trump failed to crack 40 percent in 22 states and caucuses and only won majorities in 16 states, with nine of those majorities after everyone else dropped out. If no-hopers like Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Carly Fiorina had dropped out early, either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio were in a strong position to beat Trump.

If Trump holds on to just 35 percent of the Republican electorate and a crowded field chops up the anti-Trump vote, Trump might get the nomination — at the very least he draws out the nominating process and hurts the eventual nominee’s chances. A recent Morning Consult poll has Trump with support of 40 percent of Republicans for 2024; it’s worth keeping in mind a couple of points: 1) this is mostly a name recognition number and 2) given that Trump got 94 percent of the Republican vote, a 54-point collapse is pretty terrible — but that 40 percent looks like his hardcore base.

Importantly, Republicans need to remember that were the roles reversed, Trump would vote to convict without hesitation. If Trump had the chance to kill off an opponent, he would not pause for a second to consider the principle or the morality of the matter. He would act in his own interest, 100 percent of the time.

Trump is always at war, and a large segment of the GOP does not appreciate this. You don’t play by the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules in war. Being a principled gentleman when faced with a feral brute ready to shank you in the back doesn’t make you brave or heroic — it makes you a fool.

Can McConnell get the votes?

Surprisingly, getting the votes might not be that difficult. Because Trump simply rages uncontrollably — without thought or foresight — at the slightest criticism or disagreement, he has managed to alienate plenty of Republican senators, most of whom have been winning elections in their home states long before Trump barged onto the scene — and often with much greater margins. Add to that the staggered terms in the Senate, as opposed to the House, and that several senators may be in their last term with nothing to lose, and you have a toxic stew of animus about to be served up to Trump.

Remove all the Republicans who are up for reelection in 2022 and all those who voted to challenge the Electoral College votes of either Arizona or Pennsylvania and you have 24 potential conviction votes.

Assuming Manchin votes no, we start at 49 votes to convict.

Start with the senators who are retiring or likely in their last term: McConnell, Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), which brings the conviction total to 53 votes. This group has nothing to lose and has served in the Senate for several terms. Toomey has already signaled his dismay with Trump.

Then there’s the enemies list: John Thune (R-S.D.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), which raises the conviction vote to 58. Trump has threatened these senators, often repeatedly. They also have little to lose and have already staked out ground against Trump. Thune and Murkowski are up in 2022, but probably don’t care at this point.

Consider the friends of Thune: John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) — senators from the Dakotas and Wyoming — all have common interests and have won with big margins in small states where people have personal relationships with them. Trump is not much of a threat. They would bring the conviction vote to 62.

Then there’s “Friends of Pence”: primarily James Inhofe (R-Okla.), raising the vote to 63. This list could be — and probably is — much larger. The way Trump dumped Mike Pence and left him to run from the mob infuriated Pence’s allies. Inhofe went public with his disgust.

That total — 63 — leaves McConnell a few votes short, but also with a lot of opportunities.

Senators not in their first term who are not up for reelection until 2026 include Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), James Risch (R-Idaho), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Two others aren’t up until 2024. That’s a pretty deep pool from which to fish four more votes. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) might vote to convict out of principle — even though he faces voters in 2022.

Trump has only himself to blame. Yet again he is in a mess of his own making.

Trump has voluntarily taken a seat in the electric chair. The question is whether Senate Republicans have the nerve to throw the switch.


Keith Naughton, Ph.D. is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm. Dr. Naughton is a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant. Follow him on Twitter @KNaughton711.

It's never too late -- Trump's riot watch party

I case you were still wondering: Here's a short clip detailing the Trump-attended Riot Watch Party on the White House grounds, while his "base" was amassing at the Capitol minutes before the attack:

 

What are these people thinking? The answer is: "We have our Daddy, our Sugar Daddy, our Cult Leader, our 'Base'. We don't need the Constitution. The Constitution is for losers."

Talk, talk -- Niccoló's advice

 

Let's change the subject: A UFO, a real UFO, on a video clip released by the US Navy

And this is a resonably learned link about this from VOX

Just a thought

Join the democratic union against demographic pressure

Rilke's Ghost

We're trying to clear our desk in anticipation of the line-edit of "Dolly" (the play), and so we've finally managed to put our new short story Rilke's Ghost  up on Amazon. And it's a real story---at least the beginning is true-true. 

The blurb is as follows: 

While visiting the lovely town of Duino on the Adriatic Italian coast, Michael provoked the wraith of the legendary German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, by applying Google-translate to the wordsmith's famed "Duineser Elegien" (Elegies from the Castle of Duino). Now Michael spends the summer in Switzerland, in a chalet only three kilometers away from the grave of the poet. Will Michael be stupid enough to challenge Rilke again, thus unleashing the most sophisticated ghost story of modern history, including an exorcism of serendipitous proportions...?

We'll have two or three posts about this; here's the first one, with the story's opening:

I still see myself sitting there as a boy on the greenly-striped couch of my parents in Berlin, Germany, reading Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875-1926), Bohemian poet, best known for his “Duineser Elegien” (Elegies from the castle of Duino). I read only the first two elegies then, but still, I went with the flow and was impressed.

*°*

Chang and I moved to the French Riviera where we rent our house to holiday makers. We got a surprise booking in April and decided to visit Croatia, a new country that isn’t too far away and reasonably cheap. Chang collects countries; he’s never been there. Bonus: on the way we’d have to cross Slovenia, yet another nation missing from his collection. We would drive non-stop the nine hours from Cannes to Croatia but should stay overnight somewhere on the way back, someplace nice. So Chang went on the internet and suggested a town between Venice and Trieste, on the Adriatic coast. A hotel without a view, budget-friendly. “How’s the place called?” I asked. 
“Dunno,” he said. “No, not Dunno, Du-i-no.”
Dui-no…Du-i-no…haven’t we heard of Duino before? On the Adriatic coast? “Chang! Rilke! Duineser Elegien! Chang, we must stay there.” 
“Rilke?” 
“Rilke!” 

Duino is off motorway A4. We descended into a villa town and got lost because budget-friendly hotels are hard to find. There is a ludicrous little beach attached to a harbour of a few fishing boats and a pier doubling as boardwalk; three restaurants, the castle (tower, battlements), and a university, ie, a small building labeled Collegio Sapienza Rainer Maria Rilke with lots of kids milling outside speaking American and a concierge inside who knew the directions to our hotel. 

It was still a bit early in the afternoon, so we would have a nap in the budget-friendly double bed. We should have had a nap, that is, the room was quiet and reasonably dark, save for a distant wailing, a sound like “Oohh, oohh”--a human voice almost that appeared to come from nowhere--“oohh.” Not a typical hotel sound you’d say. And it wasn’t going away. “Oohh.” Impossible to fall sleep. We should complain. We should get up, descend the noisy stairwell and thwack the bell on the reception desk. And, of course, the moment the manager appeared the wailing was gone. 

So we had to explain. “Bizarro,” the receptionist said. “Oohh,” I intoned to give her an idea. “Insolito,” she said and shook her head. “Oohh,” Chang intoned. “Pronto,” she said and answered the telephone.

(To repeat, this really happened; it's true-true)

"Click"

Brexit...accomplished

Mexico will pay for the wall

Quote--unquote -- Benjamin Franklin

(Plus ça change:)

Benjamin Franklin, in "Dangers of a settled bureaucracy" (1787)

Brexit -- what's next? --- Update

---

Update:  Perhaps we've underestimated Labour (see last paragraph below). Gaby Hinsliff writes in The Guardian:

But politics is all about opportunism, recognising the moment when it comes and ruthlessly exploiting it...Corbyn’s goal-hanging strategy of letting someone else put in the hard yards over Brexit, before swooping in to electoral glory when it all goes wrong, has served him very well for two years.

---

Original post:

The six fans of this blog have been clamoring---hold on, it’s only five now, five fans---clamoring that we shine our Machiavellian light on the future of Brexit.

It took us a little while---we were as confused as the prognosticators of The Guardian, for example---but today we had an epiphany, and now we are almost certain what's going to happen. We base ourselves on two axioms, namely:

(1) the axiom of egocentric rationality among the opportunistic supporters of Brexit, ie, Boris Johnson and his ilk. They, of course, are even more Machiavellian than we are, and so they will base their calculation on the

(2) axiom of memory shortage in the internet age.

Here’s their calculation:

(a) May’s Brexit deal will be voted down in Parliament;

(b) Confusion will rule thence; Labour remains split into semi-closeted Euro-skeptics and semi-closeted Europhiles, and unable/unwilling to rally around the Peoples Votes (a second referendum). Britain crashes out of the E-Union with no deal on March 29, 2019.

(c) There will be chaos (read this week’s detailed and fact-filled prognosis in The Economist): traffic around Dover backed up to Manchester; thousands of people dying in hospitals for lack of medication (disrupted supply chains); tear-gassed closures of manufacturing plants (disrupted supply chains), etc. Unemployment surges, inflation surges, housing prices slump. Google relocates to Berlin, unrest in Northern Ireland reignites. The government falls inside weeks. New elections bring about a Labour government.

(d) And now the second axiom: Inside a few more weeks, people have forgotten about its true cause, but the chaos will persist for months on end. AND SO, SOON THE PEOPLE WILL BLAME THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT for all of this shit. Inside a year, the not-so-new government will fall, and a refreshed, reasserted Tory government under the egocentric leadership of Boris Johnson returns to power at the very moment that misery has bottomed out and a semblance of normality returns.

The only factor left out of this calculation is the matter of residual rationality among the Labour leadership. Don’t bet on it.

What happens when your travel documents expire...

...and you live in France, and you have a Dutch passport, and it's late November...

Photo (as always) by Jason Yoon

...you have to go to Paris, to the embassy. It's the only place where you can renew your passport, and you have to show up in the flesh, you can't do it per mail. Fortunately, the Eiffel tower was in walking distance.

What's in a name

You need to know a little bit about American politics for this one:

Go and vote your ass off!

We came to renew our Saudi passports